Opium (19 page)

To become such a vital cash crop, vast tracts of productive land, formerly used for a wide variety of agriculture, were turned over to poppies. And, although most Indian opium originated from Bengal, there were other locations engaged in production.

There were three kinds of prepared Indian opium. That from Bengal, also called ‘Company's opium', had an outer covering which was black and was therefore known as ‘black earth' whilst opium from Bombay was called ‘white skin' and that from Madras ‘red skin'.

‘Black earth' was produced in the vast East India Company factories in Patna and near Benares, as previously outlined, and sent down the Ganges River for 300 miles to Calcutta. Fleets of river craft carried the chests from late November until March, the first public auction taking place on the Monday morning before Christmas.

At an auction, there could be 4000, 5000 or even 6000 chests for sale to the highest bidders, with the terms set at a small down payment with the remainder due in an agreed number of months. A second auction was conducted in February, with a third in April; if the harvest was plentiful, there was a fourth in May or even a fifth in June or early July.

The opium was purchased by firms, such as the British-owned Jardine Matheson and Dent & Co., or American companies, such as Russell & Co. of Boston and Perkins & Company. Indians and Parsees, like Heerjeebhoy and Dadabhoy Rustomjee, also traded in opium, as well as lone British entrepreneurs. Some firms did not bid directly but through agents or purchased supplies from those who had themselves bid, paying a slight premium for the convenience.

Onward shipping was carried out by vessels which had sailed from Britain with manufactured goods or raw materials, such as minerals or bales of wool. When these were unloaded, a new cargo was taken on of India cotton, saltpetre and opium. The first port of call
en route
to China was Penang, where fresh water and fruit were loaded and some opium was traded to Malay natives as well as to expatriate Chinese who sold their opium into the deep south-west of China and the area today covered by Vietnam.

Whampoa was approached by sailing up the Pearl River estuary and into the river mouth, known by its Portuguese name of
Bocca Tigris
(the Tiger's Mouth), passing either Macau on the western shore or Lintin Island, more or less in the centre. At intervals along the shore imperial forts kept watch on maritime activity.

Before 1830, opium was carried in general cargo vessels, sturdy broad-beamed craft some over a century old. They could only sail with the wind so voyaged east from India during the summer south-east monsoon, returning in winter with the north-east monsoon which blew from October to March. With the exception of the receiving ships which held a stock of opium, trade in the drug was seasonal, just as was that of tea and silk, for the famous East Indiamen were similarly unable to sail against the prevailing wind. These old ships were so well built – often of as much as a thousand tonnes of well-seasoned timber – some of them were still afloat in 1897: one, sold for salvage in the middle of the century, realised over £7500 for her timbers, the equivalent of more than £3 million today.

A seasonal trade was disadvantageous to merchants for it meant that their vessels spent a disproportionate amount of time idle whilst the price of opium was liable to fluctuation. What was needed was a new type of ship which could sail against the wind.

The result was the designing and building of sleek ships with narrow hulls, flush decks, and the capability to beat to windward. This new breed of vessel was the clipper. The classification, based on the mariner's colloquialism ‘to go at a good clip', meaning to sail quickly, referred both to small vessels which sailed against the monsoon as well as the later craft, such as the famous
Cutty Sark,
ten times the size, which beat every wind in the tea trade. The opium clippers were to become famous, beautiful ships – state-of-the-art vessels in their day. The subject of many paintings, they carried three slanting masts and a wide spread of canvas. Most of the British, American and Parsee opium-trading companies owned at least one of them.

It is believed the first opium clipper was a craft named
Red Rover.
With a displacement of 254 tons, she was built on the Hooghly River in 1829 and named after the pirate hero of James Fenimore Cooper's latest novel. She was modelled on the
Prince de Neufchatel,
which had captured nine British merchantmen during the British-American War of 1812. Her builder, Captain William Clifton, guaranteed he could provide a vessel which would do the India/China round trip thrice annually and who, before the launch, staked his reputation by announcing she would beat the monsoon on her first voyage. She did, completing the round trip from Calcutta to Macau in eighty-six days. Later, she established a record of eighteen days for the voyage from Calcutta to Lintin Island, a remarkable maritime achievement.
Red Rover
spawned an entire generation of vessels and was eventually bought by Jardine Matheson in the late 1830s as an addition to their fleet of over a dozen clippers.

Another much copied ship was the
Sylph,
not to be confused with Dobell's American craft mentioned earlier. She was a 251 ton barque, even faster than the
Red Rover,
designed by Sir Robert Seppings, Surveyor to the Royal Navy. The opium merchants also used ex-naval warships, their fire-power an effective deterrent to Chinese pirates and customs vessels: most clippers carried a complement of five guns either side, with a 68-pounder, known as a ‘long-tom', amidships. James Matheson purchased HMS
Curlew,
an eighteen-gun brig, in 1823, which served as an opium runner for many years under the name
Jamesina.

During the first twenty years of prohibition, little serious attention was paid to the 1799 edict or any of the restrictions which followed it but, in 1820, new severe penalties were laid against opium importation. Any Chinese found in possession was executed. The penalties made the captains of the receiving ships lying off Whampoa restive. A decision was made to move the receiving ships to Lintin Island, today known as Neilingding Dao. Meaning ‘Solitary Nail' because of its single 1000 foot peak, Lintin is positioned 80 miles south of Canton (today called Guangzhou) and 20 miles north-east of Macau. Although a mere 3 miles long with no natural harbour or convenient landing, it became the entrepôt port for the opium trade. Its geographical position in the estuary made it convenient for importers and buyers alike and it was not unusual to have fifteen clippers lying offshore.

As Lintin became established, three older and slower vessels – the
Merope
(owned by Matheson), the
Samarang
(owned by Dent) and the
General Quiroga
(owned by a Spanish consortium based in Manila) – were permanently moored off the island, to be joined in time by others. One, the
Lintin,
owned by an American soldier of fortune called Forbes, made him so much money in three years from 1830 that he retired, requesting to be buried in a coffin made from her mainmast. By then, up to twenty-five receiving ships rode at anchor off the island.

These hulks had their masts removed and their decks covered with either a bamboo roof or canvas awnings tailored from the sails. Their guns were not removed and they became floating fortified opium warehouses commanded by British officers, but crewed by Lascars, with Chinese craftsmen. The Lascars (known as ‘Black Barbarians' by the Chinese) were single but many of the Chinese maintained families ashore on Lintin whilst the vessels even carried the families of their British officers and became small, self-contained communities. Life for the officers could be quite pleasurable. They scaled the peak to shoot ducks and paddy-birds although they always went in parties to avoid being robbed, or ‘bambooed'. A few houses onshore offered a respite from ship-board existence and the ladies often exercised on the beach. There were even picnic outings and social dinner parties.

Chinese merchants purchased opium from the receiving ships either cash on delivery or acceptance, or paid for in advance to agents in Canton. The opium was taken out of its chest, which remained on board, and packed into bags of woven-grass matting which were loaded on to armed, two-masted Chinese river craft with fifty oars, known as ‘centipedes', ‘fast crabs' or ‘scrambling dragons'. When loaded, they made for shore, evading imperial patrols. Once safely up one of the many estuarine creeks, agents took collection and distributed the opium.

A contretemps between an imperial official and Chinese opium smugglers was witnessed in about 1836 by a young British doctor, C. Toogood Downing. After hiding itself up a creek, a mandarin's boat laid an ambush for a centipede, which at first got away. Then, as Downing recorded, the chase began:

The screams and yells of the smugglers were mixed with the ricketty sound of their vessel and the orders and cries of the mandarins behind them. Every now and then the long ornamental gun [on the mandarin boat] was turned upon its swivel, and a loud report reverberated across the country as it was discharged against the chase but with little effect: the shot was generally seen dancing along the water wide of the mark …

Unbeknownst to the smugglers, another mandarin boat was hiding up another creek and suddenly hove into view, trapping the centipede.

The mandarins rushed to the attack without hesitation, and laid about them in right good earnest, with their swords and pikes, frequently cutting and wounding in a dreadful manner; but the poor smugglers appeared to act on the defensive … Many of the defeated jumped overboard, and as they struggled in the waters to gain the shore, formed excellent marks for the spears and javelins of the conquerors. The great mass of them, however, were seized … The long pigtail served instead of the coat collar … when twisted two or three times round the hand …

That the smugglers put up only a defensive resistance is not surprising: any smuggler taken alive was sent to hard labour for life but if a mandarin or member of his crew was killed, the whole smuggling gang would have forfeited their lives.

As a general rule, such official craft kept clear of Lintin Island, although war junks frequently moored offshore, firing their guns to salute passing mandarin vessels, to tell the hour or keep evil spirits at bay. Otherwise, they made no attempt to intervene in the opium trade. They were not just afraid of a diplomatic incident but also of the superior fire-power of the opium clippers and fortified receiving vessels.

Occasionally, a show of imperial compliance was made. When a clipper sailed, a fleet of war junks would close on it. The clipper captain would maintain a speed which allowed the war junks to keep in touch so they might fire on the clipper, deliberately aiming wide or short. From time to time, Chinese smugglers were executed but the customs patrols were corrupt to such an extent even their commander, Rear-Admiral Han Shao-ch'iung, was in for his kickback. In 1832, patrols were abolished as next to useless.

No real effort was made to counteract smuggling, mainly because so many officials benefited from it: whilst opium was the main contraband, smugglers also ran any merchandise upon which a heavy duty was levied. Everyone from the viceroy to the lowest mandarin gained from the trade, the Emperor's exchequer the only real loser.

The opium trade grew as the years progressed, expanding from an annual production of 4494 chests in 1811–21 to 9708 chests in 1821–28, 18,835 chests in 1828–35 and over 30,000 chests in 1835–39. These amounts were for importation from India alone and excluded opium brought by sea and overland from Turkey, as well as that deriving from domestic cultivation. Until about 1830, there were extensive poppy fields throughout southern China, especially in Chekiang province, but the suppression of farmers in 1831 successfully restricted cultivation to isolated districts and regions where, by the late 1830s, a substantial amount of opium was once more being grown. Being inferior to Indian imports, it was usually used to blend with the latter rather than to be smoked on its own.

Opium profits were enormous and a large number of foreign nationals were engaged in the trade with or without official support from home. Other than the British, the Americans were particularly active, accounting for about 10 per cent of the trade: although prohibited by their government in 1858, many ignored the ruling. Often, the Americans tried to conceal their involvement in opium but it was just as vital a part of the American tea trade as it was the British tea trade and many prominent American families grew rich from it. At some stage British, American, Greek, Dutch, Swedish, French, Spanish, Danish, and Latin Americans operated Canton factories. Throughout the 1830s, the opium trade was worth up to £3 million per annum, the British accounting for over 80 per cent of the turnover. In 1837, the British mercantile contingent in Canton exceeded 150.

All the foreigners still had to reside in the Canton Colony, which amounted to a foreign enclave. They lived in thirteen factories, rather grand buildings rented from the Hong merchants, which were curious architectural hybrids with European and Oriental features. Each contained apartments or houses for expatriate staff, commercial offices for one or more firms and stores built around courtyards vaguely in the manner of a Chinese
yamen
or administrative centre. To the east was a noxious creek which served as a
nullah,
or open sewer. Close by, between the factories and the Pearl River frontage, was a square, later segregated into two small parks, the American and British Gardens. The riverbank was thronged with fishing and commercial sampans moored in lines and small cutters used by the merchants to reach Whampoa. Across the river, which was not bridged, lay the settlement of Honam, a temple and a fort. Residency was not year-long: to avoid the humidity and heat of the summer and, no doubt, the stink of the creek, merchants decamped from May to September to Macau where their families lived: foreign women were forbidden to occupy the factories.